Posts in Category: cardiology PACS

​Come see LUMEDX at the upcoming 103rd Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago and get the most up-to-date information about our cardiovascular service line and data intelligence tools.

RSNA 2017 will be held Nov. 26-Dec. 1 at the McCormick Convention Center. LUMEDX will be at Booth 6235, North—Hall B. The exhibition hall will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 26-29 and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 30. About 25,000 attendees and 500 technical exhibitors are expected to attend the conference.

Learn more about our cardiovascular data intelligence offerings, which includes innovative software and services to help streamline care delivery, improve outcomes and dramatically reduce costs. Demos of LUMEDX’s powerful PACS and data management tools will also be available.

The 28th Annual Scientific Sessions of the American Society of Echocardiography, the premier event for bringing together echo experts from around the world to share learning and networking opportunities, will take place June 2-6 in Baltimore, Md.

This year, the Scientific Sessions will highlight the cycle of introducing new advances into clinical medicine: investigation-innovation-incorporation. These three themes are integrated throughout the program and cover a broad range of topics related to cardiovascular ultrasound.

LUMEDX will be at ASE in force, manning Booth 617 at the Baltimore Convention center. Please drop by to see our latest workflow and data intelligence solutions.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has pushed back the implementation date for its bundled payments for cardiac care from July 1 until Oct. 1, according to Cardiovascular Business. It also suggested it could further delay the model until Jan. 1, 2018.

CMS announced the delay of the program, titled the Cardiac Rehabilitation Incentive Payment Model, this week in the Federal Register.

The bundled-payment program would allow approximately 1,120 acute care hospitals in 98 designated markets to hold on to the savings they achieve if they spend less than the target price for a 90-day episode of care for bypass and heart attack patients. However, hospitals that exceed the target price must repay Medicare -- and target prices will be determined retrospectively.

CMS previously predicted that the program - which also covers knee and hip replacement - would save the federal government as much as $159 million between now and 2021. In 2014, the CMS said, heart attack treatment for 200,000 patients cost Medicare more than $6 billion.

The new Secretary of Health & Human Services, Tom Price, has been a critic of the program, objecting to the mandatory nature of the initiative. Seema Verma, the new CMS administrator, said during her confirmation hearing in February that she preferred a gradual expansion of new payment models, Cardiovascular Business reported.

The CMS announcement said an additional three-month delay is necessary to allow time for additional review, "to ensure that the agency has adequate time to undertake notice and comment rulemaking to modify the policy if modifications are warranted, and to ensure that in such a case participants have a clear understanding of the governing rules and are not required to take needless compliance steps."

CMS added that participants would have more time to prepare for these models with the delay and that it would be preferable for payment periods to align with the calendar year. As a result, the CMS said, it is seeking comment on delaying the bundles until January 2018.

From one hospital to another, the cost of treating heart attack patients varies by as much as 50 percent. Does your hospital have a plan to meet the target prices for bypass and heart attack patients? LUMEDX's Cardiovascular Performance Program can help. Click here to find out how.

LUMEDX is pleased to announce that we've welcomed another new client to our family: Adventist Health System. The faith-based health system is headquartered in Florida and has 45 hospital campuses with more than 8,300 licensed beds in nine states.

Implementation of LUMEDX's Cardiovascular Information System in the Adventist organization will begin at Florida Hospital Tampa. The next phases of the long-term CVIS project will be implemented at nine Central Florida facilities.

"LUMEDX has been working with Adventist Health System facilities for nearly 20 years, and during that time our partnership has produced a track record of success," says Mickey Norris, vice president and general manager at LUMEDX. "We're extremely proud to help meet Adventist Health System's cardiovascular information needs into the future. Our tools will provide operational, clinical and financial analytics that will allow Adventist Health System to quickly identify best practices in each of its cardiovascular facilities-maximizing efficiencies and minimizing costs."

Cardiovascular professionals from around the world will be in Washington, D.C., this month for the American College of Cardiology's Scientific Session and Expo -- and LUMEDX will be there as well.

Set for March 17-19, the event will feature interactive debates, education and scientific presentations. ACC.17 also offers 11 learning pathways, allowing participants to focus on their choice of topics. More than 300 sessions will offer dual CME/MOC credit.

A myriad of clinical topics will be discussed, among them:

Atrial fibrillation

Acute heart failure

Cardiac surgery

Invasive cardiovascular angiography and intervention

Nuclear imaging

Pediatric/congenital cardiology

Vascular medicine

If you're going to ACC, stop by and say hi at LUMEDX Booth 2411: We'll be presenting the latest CV data-management tools and our new Cardiovascular Performance Program, which offers a no-charge analysis of your facility's CV service line performance on complication rates, including the associated costs -- and opportunities for improvement.

If you'd like to schedule a one-on-one meeting with LUMEDX,click here.

LUMEDX is happy to welcome to our family three new clients: Marshall Medical Centers; Holyoke Medical Center; and Baylor Scott & White Health, the largest not-for-profit healthcare organization in Texas.

The first Baylor Scott & White location to implement the LUMEDX solution is Baylor Jack and Jane Hamilton Heart and Vascular Hospital in Dallas. LUMEDX is providing the hospital with comprehensive cardiovascular data management that:

Connects isolated data sources,

Integrates with the enterprise electronic health record (EHR), and

Eliminates redundant data collection.

Holyoke Medical Center has gone live with our PACS with Echo Workflow software. After all phases of the CVIS deployment are completed, the secure, cloud-delivered software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution will provide the medical center-located in Holyoke, Massachusetts-with comprehensive management of its Echo, Nuclear, ECG, Holter and Stress workflows, and will offer remote access for physicians, allowing them to access data and complete reports from any location.

The deployment for Marshall Medical Centers is taking place at two hospitals: Marshall Medical North in Guntersville, Alabama; and Marshall Medical South in Boaz, Alabama. Both hospitals have implemented Echo Workflow and ECG-Holter software, which will help them improve performance and quality of care while containing costs and minimizing inefficiency.

We look forward to long and productive relationships with our new partners!

The American College of Cardiology has announced the launch of two clinical registry programs, the LAAO registry and the AFib Ablation registry. The LAAO registry college data on procedural indications, outcomes and more from left atrial appendage occlusion procedures. The AFib Ablation registry collects demographic information, outcomes, and more for patients who undergo AF ablation. For more information on LUMEDX registry software, click here.

According to a recent study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, only 10.4% of patients hospitalized with heart failure from 2005 to 2015 were referred to a cardiac rehabilitation program after discharge. Senior author Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow of Ronald Reagan-University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center states that there is "... an important need for targeted quality-improvement programs to improve use of cardiac rehabilitation for eligible patients with heart failure."

Cardiology Today reports that the World Heart Federation has released a new roadmap that is focused on reducing the burden of noncommunicable disease. The roadmap posits that treating patients at the hypertensive level will have a great impact on the prevention of CVD events.

According to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (AMA), the pool of candidates that can be treated with statins can be expanded to 67% of all U.S. adults between the ages of 40-75. It is projected that this could prevent an additional 161,560 cardiovascular events, including heart attack, stroke, and others.

Cardiovascular Business reports on the five-year results from the PARTNER I trial (Placement of Aortic Transcatheter Valves Trial), which show that 5 years after implant, "valves showed no signs of deterioration with durable hemodynamics." With risk down, GlobalData now projects that the compound annual growth rate for TAVR valves will increase 19.7% between 2013 and 2020.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new heart failure drug by Novartis, which has been met with considerable support from the medical community. The drug - Entresto - is the first in a new class of drugs called angiotensin receptor neprilysin inhibitors that is used to treat high blood pressure and congestive heart failure while enhancing neurohormonal systems.

The focus for this week's healthcare IT round-up is cardiology PACS and the cardiology imaging market. Read on to see the top industry news stories we've compiled from around the Web. You can also learn more about LUMEDX'sHealthViewCardioPACS solution here.

Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology reports that the largest barrier to hospitals seeking to upgrade their CVIS or cardiology PACS systems is interoperability. The article states that: "... an ideal CVIS should be standards-based, vendor neutral, [and] use[s] structured reporting (to enable comprehensive searches and data mining)."

GBI Research's lastest report on the global PACS market shows that the industry will surpass $5.3 billion in value by 2020. The global PACS market is currently valued at $2.9 billion, with the United States leading the charge. According to the report, "... many U.S. hospitals are considering upgrading their conventional PACS and are seeking interoperability with different vendors of EMRs and other information systems."

Diagnostic Imaging reports on a recent study published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology that shows that appropriate use criteria (AUC) for cardiac imaging have led to some improvements in volumes of cardiac imaging requests. AUC resulted in improvements for some types of cardiac imaging tests but not all.

According to a report from market research firm MicroMarket Monitor, the North American cardiology PACS market is projected to grow 5.9% from 2014 to 2019. As of 2013, the industry was valued at $206.7 million.

Diagnostic Imaging discusses how EMR vendors are beginning to make forays into the cardiology PACS market, one that was previously controlled by a "core set of image-centric vendors." According to the article, major vendors are looking to expand into the cardiology image and information systems (CIIMS) space.